Integrated circuits have become an integral part of our daily live particularly in many portable electronic products such as cell phones, portable computers, voice recorders, etc. Integrated circuits are also in many larger electronic systems, such as cars, planes, industrial control systems, etc. Across virtually all applications, there continues to be demand for improving costs of electronic devices.
Consumer demand for smaller, cheaper, faster electronic products directly affects all aspects of integrated circuit manufacturing. Increasing demand across virtually all aspects of modern life is driving improvements in integrated circuit technology. Generally, integrated circuits can also be referred to as ‘semiconductor device’, ‘chip’ or ‘die’.
The integrated circuit is manufactured through several technologies and processes. Most of the critical processes require some form of preparation or cleaning. Improvements and developments in preparation or cleaning directly contribute to lower costs including existing materials, known processes, and high yield for a large percentage of usable devices.
Prior to mixing metals such as Co or Ni with other semiconductors for improved performance, a cleaning process using an acid as the last step is used to ensure oxide-free surfaces for processing the metals. Conventional processes using acid as the last step during wet cleaning utilizing either dilute or buffered hydrofluoric acid solutions that result in surfaces, which are susceptible to the contamination of organic or carbon-based deposits during or after the clean.
These contaminants could be in the form of residues, particles, etc and would block subsequent metal deposits resulting in adverse performance and manufacturing impacts on the integrated circuit device. The impacts can range from poor performance to failure of the integrated circuit devices. If the performance is poor enough or in the event of failure, the integrated circuit devices are unusable. The unusable integrated circuit devices reduce the ratio or percentage of the usable integrated circuit devices sometimes referred to as yield.
Low yield or a small percentage of usable integrated circuit devices results in a higher cost for each usable integrated circuit device. There are typically fixed costs for the materials including the integrated circuit wafer on which the integrated circuit die are manufactured. Even more costly can be integrated circuit devices that seem to be usable initially but suffer from poor performance or failure after being utilized in a product. The accumulated costs of manufacturing the integrated circuit devices through all the steps of a product's process is often much more significant than the cost of unusable integrated circuit devices.
Across virtually all applications, there continues to be growing demand for lower cost and increasing performance of integrated circuits. The seemingly endless restrictions and requirements are no more visible than with products in our daily lives. Less costly integrated circuits are expected in many portable electronic products as well as in many larger electronic systems.
As the demand continues to grow for lower cost electronic products, manufacturers are seeking ways to provide higher capacity manufacturing with well-known and cost effective materials and methods.
Thus, a need still remains for an integrated circuit system to provide improved cost and manufacturing yield. In view of the increasing demand for improved integrated circuits and particularly higher yields and lower costs, it is increasingly critical that answers be found to these problems.
Solutions to these problems have been long sought but prior developments have not taught or suggested any solutions and, thus, solutions to these problems have long eluded those skilled in the art.